Pyaasa
Directed by Guru Dutt | Music by S. D. Burman
India | 1957 | Fiction | 146 mins | Hindi and Urdu w/English subtitles

This event is part of Global Roots Film Festival: Why Sing, Why Dance?

In newly-independent India (1947), Hindi cinema, with its rich use of music and dance, would become the entertainment of choice for millions in and beyond the subcontinent. The movie musical would propel a massive phenomenon, the studio system that would go on and outsell Hollywood ….. Bollywood, where song and dance would connect with a population of hundreds of millions, only 20% literate and still recovering from post partition civil war.

Set in Calcutta, West Bengal, the film tells the story of Vijay, a struggling poet trying to make his works known in post-independence India, and Gulabo, a prostitute with a heart of gold, who helps him to try and get his poems published.